Pick Me

Many of you remember the school playground and informal sports played there. In those days of elementary school, a kid could be dropped off early to wait for the bell when the doors were opened. The school staff had a big rolling canvass bin of sports equipment. There were informal seasons. Some seasons kids might pull out their own playing pieces for jacks or marbles. In other seasons kids would request a kickball or a football or a softball and bats. It would happen before school, at recess, and in free outdoor-play after eating lunch.

For team sports, there was the sometimes-excruciating process of naming captains for the selection of the teams. The captains were often the de facto leaders and skilled players. Their first pics were right up there with their skills. After that, the on-looking candidates just waited anxiously for their names to be called. That was my group. Never picked first, never last, but until selected I always felt insecure. The captains had seen me play. They had assessed my relative benefit or liability toward a win for their team. School kids fell somewhere on a bell curve on a chart with the x-axis indicating a range of feeling from pride to humiliation. A few were jazzed over the draft order, and a few felt dejected. Captains knew when to pick me because they knew me.

It is worthwhile for the Christian to consider that God knows us, and God picks us. We are selected not for a win, but for love. My presumption is God does have desired things to accomplish in the midst of human activity and human history. My presumption is we are selected to play for the success of those divine purposes. My sense from scripture and theological tradition however is God knows us through and through and selects us out of love, not out of a set of skills. God formed us in the womb, has been guiding and nurturing us, and is forming us still. Imagine the Coach of all coaches picking you, not to win something, but because this Nurturer wants to shape and form you out of love.

Psalm 139 is unique. It comes up to us in our liturgy next Sunday. It is a long admission by the psalm writer that the Creator knows him through and through. Near the end, verse fifteen, reads, “Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book;  they were fashioned day by day, when as yet there was none of them.” That has to do with design and the physical reality of us. The very first verse is, “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.” That has to do with the ideas, thoughts, and consciences of us all.

Honestly, examining the whole psalm, we would see it is a human admission of the all-knowing God, but in the end, it testifies to very human worries about the singer’s adversaries. In short, the psalm is saying, “You know me like no other, look within me; probe me to see if there is any flaw or vexing way before I go out against my loathsome enemies. See, it is a very human testimony, as all the psalms are. In scriptures, we get a picture of human beings, of course, and surprisingly we get the picture of them with warts and all. I want us to focus on the beauty of this devout admission in the center of the piece because that is the element that fits with the whole bundle of passages selected for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany this year.

The theme of the day is a selection: we are called and chosen by God to follow in the holy ways of Christ. Jesus picks his disciples. He forms them, and then he sends them into the world as Apostles to represent his ways of restoration and union with God. In the days ahead, we will consider God’s selection of Samuel the young disciple of Eli, the aged judge and priest of Israel in ancient Samaria. We will also consider Jesus’ choosing of Philip and Nathaniel (Bartholomew) as disciples. Today we focus on the psalm which highlights beautifully the notion God knowingly selects us. Take some time to contemplate these central passages:

Indeed, there is not a word on my lips,
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.

You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.

For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.

— Psalm 139:3-5, 12-14

God knows us physically and knows our thoughts. While you were forming in your mother’s womb, God was at work inside of you. Needing no light, since darkness and light are both alike to God, the Crafter knit and wove us together within our dark watery, first home. Hebrew scholar, Robert Alter, translates the second couplet above like this, “From behind and in front You shaped me, and You set Your palm upon me.” He says the verb has the sense of shaping or fashioning like a potter, giving that metaphor to the imagined forming of the embryo in utero. The Potters palm formed you in the womb and is available to be upon you in guidance even now. We are still in formation in many ways as we lend ourselves to God’s creative shaping.

Recreation and sports on the playground might have been rewarding or humiliating as a child. But God chooses us all, not based on merit but love. You are selected and in formation not for a momentary win, but for the core purpose of being: the purpose of knowing love, which is to say, knowing God. In place of a win, you can look forward to the union. Yes, there will be work for you to do. Yes, your skills for divine ministry will be put to use. The Holy One has searched you, and known you. Keep in mind, you are already chosen, you do not have to wait and wonder. God is with you to guide and teach: you will be strengthened for every time at-bat, every pass to catch, and every kick you apply to the ball rolled your way.